


The Family Game

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Series: Kink and Bone [5]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Dario is a mess, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Headaches & Migraines, Light Dom/sub, Mentions of bad parenting (fanon), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Muslim Character, Overprotective Khalila, Sleepy Cuddles, So much headcanon, newly-weds, will i ever write anything in this series that doesn't get that tag lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22908670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: Bit of fluffy stuff. Dario has a migraine at a Seif family do and he and Khalila disagree on how he should react.
Relationships: Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif
Series: Kink and Bone [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1444414
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	The Family Game

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read my fic Denial, this might be a little tricky to follow. Just accept that Dario gets migraines and also has a shitty dad lol.

There had been a time when Khalila would never have believed that she would feel grateful for the obligatory black abaya of formal family gatherings, but here she was anyway.

The simple outfit gave her the illusion that she was just another Seif woman amongst many. 

It _was_ all an illusion, of course, everyone knew exactly who she was and didn’t need cloth-of-gold or tiaras to understand her status. Everyone had needed to pass through heightened security to enter the house, for example.

But, still. Instead of being surrounded by assistants and Scholars and diplomats, she was surrounded by people who insisted on telling her how much she’d grown, making her eat yet another sweet treat, or recounting embarrassing tales from her younger years.

She silently thanked Allah for shaping her life in such a way that the chafing restrictions of her childhood were a comfort to her now.

A flash of scarlet caught her eye, and she beamed as Dario walked up to her. 

“Eat this.” She held out a chunk of baklava. “Aunt Reema won’t stop telling me I need ‘more flesh on my bones,’ and I’m so full.”

He accepted the baklava and nibbled it. “I wouldn’t say no to you putting more flesh on, flower.” 

She returned his little flicker of a look with interest. Although she was extremely biased, she did think that her husband was the handsomest man in the room. 

(The word ‘husband’ still chimed deliciously in her ears, even though it had been several months since their marriage.)

After interrogating her about the formality of the event, he’d settled for overkill, as usual. A black tailcoat over a white waistcoat and shirt, with a white bowtie and white scarf. His trousers were black too, and distractingly tight. 

All smartly monochrome, apart from the large red flower in his jacket buttonhole. 

She reached out and teasingly poked it. 

Of course he’d had to include a splash of colour. And of _course_ it had to be an attempt at 'desert rose', one of his many foolish nicknames for her. It made her want to lead him back to their room and very firmly close the door for the afternoon.

She drew herself away from that line of thought with difficulty. Not helped by the way that he was more orally fiddling with the baklava than eating it. 

The set of his shoulders was stiff.

“Did you get bored of being a social butterfly, then?” She snuggled her shoulder up against his arm. He smiled and took her hand to squeeze it. 

Apart from the wedding party, this was his first appearance in front of the Seif extended family. Saleh had taken Dario under his wing and introduced him, and when she’d last seen Dario he had been busily attempting to charm everyone in the room. 

If anything, she’d like to see him relax a little. This wasn’t the Spanish court or the Archivist’s throne room; it was just a Seif family celebration. Still, she couldn’t blame him for being on edge.

“I don’t know if I’m the social butterfly here. You’ve been surrounded since we arrived.”

Khalila rolled her eyes. “I barely even needed to speak. I could probably have stood there completely silently and Mama Hussa would still have lectured me about how I’m working too hard.”

“You _are_ working too hard,” Dario muttered, then, as she tilted her head to glare at him, added quickly, “Mama Hussa is your paternal grandmother, right?”

She nodded. That was a blatant conversational redirect, but an understandable one. It was quite funny watching him get lost amongst her family. Even in her immediate family, she had fourteen cousins and eight aunts and uncles.

“Where’s your earring?” She touched his empty earlobe, where a gaudy golden earring that he had adopted from her wedding gifts should have been hanging. 

He patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “Safe and sound. It was just a bit heavy.”

She raised an eyebrow. He’d worn that exact earring for longer than two hours before. 

He gave her an odd sideways look in return. His face twitched quickly in and out of the blank expression she hated so much. It meant he was hiding something.

“Dario.”

He sighed. “I’ve got a headache, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She gripped his hand. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Not really.” He met her eyes again for a moment, then took a slightly larger bite out of the baklava. She gave him an approving smile. 

“Maybe you’ll feel better with some food inside you.”

He nodded. “Maybe. Not sweet food, though.” He straightened from his leaning position against the wall and looked up towards the other end of the long buffet table. 

At that exact moment, excitable little Safiyya (Khalila’s aunt’s sister’s daughter) yanked back the blinds at the other end of the room and shouted,

“Look, Mama! It’s another rock rabbit!”

The angle of the sunlight changed, and it glinted harshly off the crystal chandelier. Khalila blinked away purple spots in front of her eyes and turned her head away until the disturbed blind had shuffled back into its previous position. 

Dario made a soft, unhappy sound. “That wasn’t … ideal.”

She stepped back to get a better look at his face. He was still squinting, even though the intrusive glare had vanished.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm. Don’t know. That was sharp.” He pressed his knuckles to the line of his left eyebrow. The distinctive motion immediately set off alarm bells in Khalila’s head. 

“Is it a migraine?”

“Not yet. It might settle.”

He was being optimistic there, Khalila thought to herself, noticing that he wasn’t meeting her eyes. He struggled to focus on details when a migraine hit. 

“I’ll go and tell Mama you might need to excuse yourself -” She broke off and raised astonished eyes to Dario’s face. He’d just grabbed her wrist. 

“Sorry.” He let go immediately. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t tell your mother. I don’t want to make a fuss.”

Her outrage softened immediately, replaced by familiar anger at Dario’s father whose words Dario was currently parroting. 

“You’re not making a fuss. You’re reacting to pain. If I don’t fill Mama in, _she’ll_ make a fuss if you leave, and barge in and try to make you eat and drink and tell her what’s wrong.” 

She didn’t miss Dario’s briefly nauseated expression at her examples. Yes, this looked like it was going to explode into a full-blown migraine any minute now. 

“Stay here while I speak to her, then we’ll go back to our room. I’ll get you some painkillers.” She didn’t realise how she was moving until she’d already done it, until she’d shifted the angle of her body and he’d mirrored it, until he was backed against the wall. 

But this wasn’t their sex thing. (It _wasn’t_ ).

It was just … the best way to get rid of the anxiety that the memory of paternal criticism created in Dario. Tell him she was in charge. Tell him that he wouldn’t be blamed for anything because the decisions hadn’t been his responsibility. 

“You’re just reacting to pain,” she repeated. “You’re _allowed_ to do that, Dario. Before it gets debilitating, even!”

He sighed and gave her a tiny smile. “I know, flower.” He kneaded his brow again and inhaled shakily. “Feeling a bit sick now.”

She nodded. “Stay. I’ll be right back.”

It took her a moment to locate her mother in the busy room, and when she did the sight made her roll her eyes. Of course her mother had succeeded in wrenching the new baby away from her daughter-in-law _again_. 

“Hello, attentive grandmother,” she said as she approached. 

Her mother’s eyes crinkled in response to the tease, and she held out the snoozing baby for Khalila to take. 

Khalila shook her head and kept her hands by her sides. Little Janaa was so tiny that it was frightening. 

Her mother faked a disappointed tut. “You’ll find your motherly instincts one day.”

Khalila gave that the briefest acknowledgement that she could get away with, then got to the point. “Mama, Dario has one of his bad headaches and needs to go and lie down.”

“Oh!” Her mother looked around for someone to pass the baby to. 

“No, Mama! We don’t need anything. He just needs to sleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her mother dumped baby Janaa back onto her hastily summoned daughter-in-law. Khalila sent the woman, only a few years older than herself, an awkward, apologetic look. “I have been looking into these _hemicrania_ headaches since you told me about them.”

Khalila winced at the old-fashioned Greek term, and wondered what her mother had been reading. 

Her mother stood up and brushed her hands off. Ready for action. That habit put chills in the heart of every Seif under a certain age. 

What came out of her mother’s mouth, though, was not what Khalila expected. 

“I’ll find some material to darken the windows with. Your floor’s private anyway, no-one should be banging about. There’s already a basin in your room, isn’t there?” She didn’t wait for Khalila’s nod before continuing; “Put it outside if it gets filled and I’ll arrange for it to be cleaned and put back.”

Sensitivity to light and sound, check, vomiting, check. Her mother _had_ been researching. 

“Thank you, Mama.” She gave her mother a shamed little bow of her head. Her mother’s bright gaze lingered on her for a second and the corner of her mouth twitched upwards, but all she said was,

“Hurry up, he looks like he’s about to decorate the carpet.”

Khalila paused just long enough to scribble a belated note to her security team about her movements, then hurried to Dario’s side. His face was pale and drawn. 

“Everything’s sorted. Let’s get you to bed.” 

He followed her silently through the house to their room. 

Silence didn’t bode well. Neither did his declining her offer of a hand to hold. He got overly sensitive to touch during a migraine.

“Go back to the party,” he said thickly a few minutes later. He was seated on the bed, clumsily but determinedly undoing an apparently endless array of buttons on his outfit. He’d already dry-swallowed the painkilling pill, and she hoped he kept it in his stomach for long enough to feel its effects. 

“Do you _really_ need to take the undershirt off too?” she said, watching his hands as she undid his shoelaces by feel.

His fingers stilled and dropped to his lap, and he let out the soft, flat huff of air that was as close as he got to laughter during a migraine. 

“I _will_ go back to the party, once you’re all settled.” As carefully as she could, she wriggled his shoes off. 

“‘M settled,” he mumbled, gingerly lying down. She gave that the heartfelt sigh it deserved. 

Only a few minutes later, Ali, who had been the household servant since before Khalila was born, entered. As quickly and quietly as possible, Ali attached a thick sheet of canvas around the window. Gloom fell immediately - a good result for mid-afternoon in spring.

Khalila gave him a grateful smile as he left. 

Then she re-positioned the basin where Dario had to move as little as possible to reach it, whispered, “See, I’m going now,” and left too. 

Her mother caught her eye as she entered the party room again, and she nodded to show that everything was fine. 

Oh, no. Here came Mama Hussa again.

_Alive_ , Dario messaged her an hour and a half later. 

She frowned at his handwriting. Messy. An hour and a half was too quick for a full recovery. 

_Go to sleep_ , she wrote back, underlining sleep heavily. 

_Oh God, yes please_ , he wrote back, then signalled the end of the conversation with a fair approximation of his usual showy signature. 

A number of the younger family members began to gather to play _tarneeb_ , a ‘trumps’ card game that she had, after a little research for the English equivalent, described to a curious Jess once as ‘like whist’. 

Saleh caught her eye and waved her over enthusiastically. She smiled and shook her head. Saleh sauntered over.

“Come on, you wallflower.”

Flower-based nicknames didn’t assist her in avoiding the mental image of poor Dario in bed, all alone in the dark. 

She didn’t bother to hide the book propped in her open Codex from her brother, and he was too used to her to mention it. 

“Have fun,'' she said. ''It’s a pity Dario’s upstairs. He loves card games." She scanned the room. "Oh, and someone’s got the hookah away from grandfather at last! Dario would like that, too.” 

Oops. Well, it was clear where her attention was, wasn’t it?

“Anyway, Sal, you know I’d beat you all.”

Normally that unusually boastful claim would have been immediately seized upon and proof demanded, but Saleh just smiled gently at her and said, 

“It _is_ a pity Dario isn’t here. Ahmed has gone upstairs to see if he wants to join in.” 

“He what?” Khalila’s book slid onto the floor, which was how she noticed that she’d jumped to her feet. 

Nothing flustered Saleh, but he did raise an eyebrow at her. “He’s hardly going to drag him downstairs kicking and screaming.”

Which was how Khalila realised that she was up on the balls of her feet and ready to strike. 

“He needs to sleep,” she said, defensively, which sounded ridiculous but made more sense than ‘ _Dario won’t say no_ ’ and was less invasive of his privacy than ‘ _he’s been ordered from childhood to try to push through pain and nausea and he wants to impress you all._ ’

She took a few deep but ineffective breaths and lowered her weight back onto her heels with an effort of will. This was not a threat. 

“I’ll go and make sure he’s not overestimating himself again.”

“He does that in many areas, I’m sure.”

She whirled to aim a cutting comment in defense of Dario, then tangled herself in the distinctly horrifying thought that this was another of the endless sex jokes Saleh had been subjecting her to with a straight face since her marriage, and by the time she’d pulled herself together he had walked away laughing to himself. 

Ugh. Brothers. 

She walked away, and hopped one step awkwardly as the force of her turn wrapped loose fabric over one leg. 

How did Wolfe make this look so dramatic?

Dismay didn’t even begin to cover her reaction when she looked through their open bedroom door. 

Dario was perched on the edge of the desk, laughing and joking with Ahmed. 

All would be well, if he wasn't pale and in a state of utter disarray from his untidy hair to his wrinkled trousers and mis-buttoned shirt. She could see his hands trembling from the other side of the room. 

''Hello, flower.'' He tugged at his shirt, as if there was anything at all he could do to make himself look less ill. ''Ahmed just came to see if I wanted to play cards.''

The pride in his voice nearly broke her resolve. She nearly let him sacrifice his own dignity for the sense of group inclusion. 

Nearly. 

''What are you going to do, husband of mine, fall asleep on the table and snore them into submission?'' She walked further into the room and smiled at Ahmed. ''If there is a game going when he comes downstairs, I'm certain he'll join in.''

Ahmed, her father's cousin's son, was nearly ten years older than her and making a lot of money from property. More than clever enough to understand her barely polite dismissal, if a touch too conservative to like it. His gaze flashed towards Dario, just for a moment. 

Khalila sank her teeth into her cheek and fought the unsavoury urge to pull rank. 

Impressively for someone who looked like a paper facsimile of himself, Dario picked up on at least some of the unsaid conversation. He ducked his head in an excessively polite bow and said, 

''I'm honoured that you would think of me, and I look forward to enjoying your company again later in the day.'' 

Ahmed smiled at Dario's formal wording. ''I too would be honoured, Don Santiago.'' He equalled Dario’s bow, then aimed another one, lower still, at Khalila. Feeling guilty for her brusque attitude, she matched it. 

The door closed behind him. Khalila said, “Go to bed,” at the same time that Dario sighed and said,

“Really, my love?”

They stared at each other stubbornly for a moment. Dario spoke first,

“What’s got your spikes out?”

“You, as usual.” She took one of his trembling hands in both of hers. He let her, but his eyes didn’t soften. He wasn’t playing along this time. “I’m protecting you from your own stupidity, Dario!”

“Undeniably a noble and endless endeavour.” He looked frustrated more than angry, she thought, although maybe he was merely too worn down for the wilder emotion. “Don’t order me around like that in front of people. It’s not fair.” His eyes flashed.

She bit back a pert, pointless response that she hadn’t ‘ordered him around’. No, she hadn’t, but she’d made a decision and stated it as if it were final, and they both knew that was functionally the same thing.

“You could have disagreed,” she pointed out. He scoffed. 

“I had to choose between two forms of embarrassing myself in front of your family. I chose the option which got it over with the quickest.”

She laughed at the irony. “And here I was, trying to protect you from that same embarrassment.” She let his hand drop from her grasp. Oddly, doing that felt like an apology. 

He shrugged, and the ghost of a smile flickered onto his wan face. “There is no protection from my own ignorance.”

This, again. She wished that Dario didn’t see the world as a game, but he did, and she knew he wouldn’t feel settled with her family until he’d discovered how to win. 

And, she realised with a cold lurch, she might have just sabotaged this round with her show of control. 

“I apologise.” She leaned forwards and felt relief as his arms closed securely around her. “I didn’t think about your standing in this situation. I just wanted-”

“Mm, but why?” He sounded confused now. “Really, flower. What was so-”

He trailed off as she drew back and stared at him. Had he not realised, yet? 

“If this was a simple, stubborn decision you were making, to choose gambling over sleep, vice or virtue, then I’d let you suffer,” she agreed. “Explain yourself, then, without using anything from the semantic fields of ‘lazy’, ‘weak’ or ‘coping’.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it. “Ah,” he said, in a light, flat voice. 

“Yes. When I see your father spilling out of you, I will fight him with everything I have.” She cupped his cheek and he let her draw him down for a soft, quick kiss.

He chuckled against her lips and murmured, “My avenging angel.” 

They embraced for a few peaceful moments, then he sighed and stepped away. She looked up with concern, but he smiled shakily down at her. 

“Bed, then, as you say. Just for a bit.” He yawned and turned towards the bed. 

“Aren’t you going to get undressed again?” she asked as he folded himself back down onto the mattress with a sigh. 

He burrowed into the pillow. “Nah. Cold.” He sounded half-asleep already, his careful, irritated words from moments before gone like smoke in the wind. 

She climbed onto the bed next to him and reached for the first button of his shirt. “You’re not cold. You’re just exhausted. You’ll warm up under the covers.” The second button was threaded through the fourth hole; oh Dario. She undid the rest. “Imagine how creased this would be if you slept in it.”

He gave her a tiny, wobbly smirk that she _knew_ was hiding some sort of arrogant comment about servants, but he stayed quiet and wriggled around to help her slide the shirt down his arms. 

His bleary, trusting gaze settled the twitchy anger inside her. This wasn’t the time for that - if yes, thank you Dario, it had ever been appropriate at all. His vulnerability was a gift and she valued it greatly. 

She laid his shirt carefully aside and drew the bedcovers up to his chin. 

“There we go.” 

He nuzzled her hand. “Stay.”

As if she could say no to that. “Escape my family and cuddle with my husband? Oh, such an arduous task.” She sat next to him with a pillow behind her back and he pressed his forehead to her thigh. 

“You avoided a ‘hard’ pun,” he mumbled with fake disapproval. 

She giggled. “Between you and Saleh, can I say a single thing today and maintain my modesty?” She reached out to stroke his head, to neaten those disordered curls, but stopped herself just in time. He cracked one eye open from where both had already slid shut, and saw her hand. Smiled and nuzzled even closer into her leg. Reassured that her touch wouldn’t hurt him, she started to gently comb through his hair. 

A few moments later, he hunched his shoulders and wriggled more tightly under the covers. 

“Still cold?” 

He nodded. Only his eyes and forehead were visible above the bedcovers. “Sorry. I’m not actually cold. I know.”

She tapped his blanketed shoulder. “Shush. If it’s stopping you getting comfortable, I’ll get you a blanket.” 

She did just that, tucking the new material up around his chin so that the texture would add psychological heft to the technically unnecessary layer.

“Mm. Pampering.”

“I like pampering you. You deserve pampering.” That last was aimed at his father again. She couldn’t help it. 

His hair was starting to look a little tidier now - at least at the front, where she could reach. “Now, go to sleep like a good boy.”

Oops. That endearment, normally used when they were being ... adventurous in bed, slipped out without her conscious permission. Her fingers stilled in his hair, and her cheeks warmed. Not good timing, Khalila, she scolded herself. Not when you’ve already overstepped today. 

It was the vulnerability. It did things to her. The honour of watching him strip away all his gilded defenses and reveal all the truths hidden underneath. 

“Sorry,” she said with an awkward laugh. 

But he merely tilted his head more firmly into her hand and made a tiny satisfied sound.

 _Well_ , she thought with an almost desperate feeling of fondness. _This doesn’t make me less inclined to say it again._

They would talk about it later. 


End file.
